Kensington Swan's view on aspects of the construction industry

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Liability

The Supreme Court recently released its long awaited decision in relation to the collapse of the Southland Stadium. Background From 1999 to 2000, the Southland Indoor Leisure Centre Charitable Trust (the Trust) had a stadium built to provide indoor sporting and recreational facilities. Remedial work to the roof carried out in 2000 was defective and…

Mainzeal was one of the largest construction companies in New Zealand when it was put into receivership in 2012, liquidation followed shortly afterwards. Fast-forward five years and the receivership stage process has just been completed with the Receivers retiring on 15 May 2017. The completion of the Receivership means that the secured creditors (bank) and…

Last week the Court of Appeal released their decision for the case of Invercargill City Council v Southland Indoor Leisure Centre Charitable Trust. This case arose from the collapse of the roof of the Invercargill community courts in 2010. The Trust, who owns the building, claimed the Council was negligent in issuing a code compliance…

James Hardie is an international building materials company, specialising in the manufacture of ‘Harditex’, ‘Titan board’ and ‘Monotek’ building cladding products used in the construction of several thousand New Zealand homes and buildings throughout the 1990’s and 2000’s. They are known to be a sophisticated company with a long history of litigation relating to asbestos-related…

Contempt laws have been developed over centuries to prevent or punish conduct that interferes with the administration of justice. As a recent English High Court decision (GB Minerals Holdings Ltd v Short [2015] EWHC 1387) illustrates, the construction industry is not immune from such conduct. All contractors and principals are familiar with projects where costs have exceeded initial estimates.…

A breach of contract does not give the innocent party carte blanche to recover damages for any loss that may have stemmed from the breach. The amount of damage or loss that can be recovered is subject to a number of considerations, one of which being the actions taken by a complainant to mitigate any…

Recently the extent of a builder’s liability in tort has been the subject of a number of judicial decisions in New Zealand. Across the Tasman Australia have been grappling with similar considerations. The High Court of Australia (Australia’s highest court) has recently released a decision concerning builder’s liability for pure economic loss; Brookfield Multiplex Ltd…